


conceive of the impossible

by ggggnashville



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Botched First Kiss, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, season three stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 10:06:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4621275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ggggnashville/pseuds/ggggnashville
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is impossible that John doesn't know.  Borderline offensive even.  He’s been screaming it for years so loudly that his throat is raw and damaged; and yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	conceive of the impossible

It is impossible that John doesn't know. Borderline offensive even. He’s been screaming it for years so loudly that his throat is raw and damaged; and yet.

It started when his plane landed in America, at LAX, and the first thing Sherlock had done was chain smoke nine cigarettes on the cab ride to the safe house. He would only be in Los Angeles for one week (thankfully) but in that time he would have to find three of Moriarty’s men. At least that was the plan. 

The plan had not gone correctly. He’d gotten found out.  
The three of them had anticipated him.  
They had tied him up to a chair and locked him in a basement. It was terribly hot. 

“It’s so funny you’re here. You really will be dead soon,” the one with red hair had said, grinning and showing the large gap between his two front teeth.  
“You will just have to kill me. I won’t tell you anything,” Sherlock had replied calmly.  
“You’d do it if we sent someone to London to find Doctor Watson. Tell me, did you fuck him or did he fuck you? I’ll never understand that shit, fucking faggots.”

Sherlock had spit in his face, which had earned him a broken nose he would later reset alone on the mattress of the safe house.  
It took Mycroft’s men two hours to find him.  
Sherlock never let himself slip up again. 

It started this way, the screaming. It only gets louder.

^

 

It continues on a blue rug in Mexico.  
Sherlock has thought about it many times but has tried to avoid it.  
Now, however, he lets the idea wash over him. He enters his mind palace easily and lets the fantasy unfold. 

John, lying in bed with him, undressing him slowly, mouthing at Sherlock’s cock through his pants, leaving a wet patch on the fabric, teasing him endlessly. John bringing his mouth back up around Sherlock’s torso, then his neck, then finally kissing him. Going back down and kissing his thighs. John finally removing Sherlock’s pants and then sucking him off.  
Sherlock returns the favor happily. He imagines how John would taste. He imagines licking John’s cum off his own fingers, John whispering “You’re just obscene right now, look at you.” 

He comes into his own hand, alone on the blue rug.  
John would hate this if he knew. He would hate Sherlock for thinking of him like this if he knew. Sherlock cleans himself up and folds his knees into his chest. John would be disgusted. Sherlock closes his eyes and feels nauseous. 

^

It continues in Nigeria. The heat is unbearable and Sherlock sticks out like a sore thumb. He has tracked down a money launderer and as he cuts off the other man’s airways it suddenly seems too intimate. The man chokes and falls to the ground. Sherlock decides knocking him out with a nearby brick is easier and he does so. 

He drags the man’s limp body into the car and waits, anxious.  
The man is taken into custody within an hour.  
Sherlock drives the hour back to his hotel room and chugs two bottles of water. There is no air conditioning.  
He lets himself fall asleep on the floor and does his best not to think of John, unsuccessfully of course (as always).

 

 _You fell in love with him, you fucking idiot_ he thinks to himself, lying on the floor, neck red, sweating. 

John has always been beautiful. When he walks, he’s confident, he takes up whole rooms with the light he emits. His confidence is staggering and God, if he isn’t handsome, the sly smirks, the dark blue eyes, and

_no, no, no._

_I’ve fallen in love with the way he says my name._

Sherlock never expected to love so fully. Then again, it makes perfect sense. 

 

^

It’s been six months. 

The knife cuts down his calf, and he thinks he really may have failed this time. But he is able to dodge to the left just in time, grabs the knife, and aims down. It’s the first time he kills a man in ten years and he hates every second of it. The alternative of dying in this French alley himself without seeing John again is far more terrifying.  
Sherlock recalls every time he had wanted to die in the past and how now he is trying desperately to live.  
_Does he even miss me?_ Sherlock wonders as he rolls up his jeans to look at the wound. 

He remembers the way John’s face had looked upon seeing his body. He remembers the empty gravestone, the little speech. But it’s been half a year and John is nothing if not capable and although sometimes there were glances, sometimes words had fallen out a few times, a few gestures, (like the time Sherlock had pretended to be asleep on the floor when John had come downstairs for water and John had run a hand through Sherlock’s hair a bit too slowly to be platonic) but then Sherlock reminds himself of who he is, and though people have wanted to touch him, none have loved him, and John is no exception. Exceptional, of course. But not in this case. 

He is losing a lot of blood. He rips his shirt up and uses it as a makeshift bandage until he makes it back to his room. It had taken two weeks to track this one down. He’d been harder to find because he’d nearly erased his entire identity. 

He doesn’t want to be in France anymore. 

He doesn’t want to, but he needs a drink.

Hours later, with self-sewn stitches itching his calf, he goes out to a bar, gets a little drunk, and finds a man who looks a little like John and who could never come close. 

He sucks the man off in the French man’s tiny flat and thrusts into his own fist, pretending he’s with John. It doesn’t even come close. John doesn’t speak French and the man keeps mumbling filthy things. Sherlock wishes he’d keep his damn mouth shut. After the man comes, Sherlock follows shortly after, John’s name falling out of his mouth before he can stop it.  
He looks up at the man, unsure if he should be apologetic.  
“C’est daccord,” the man says. _It’s okay._ “Nous avons tous un passé.”  
Sherlock just nods in agreement. He gets up off his knees. The man tries to kiss him before he leaves. He feels nauseous but lets it happen. He leaves as quickly and as quietly as possible. 

 

^

Tamil Nadu is a fantasy of a place. It’s unbearably hot. He feels ill with how much he misses. He can’t help but wonder what John is doing at this very moment.  
Sherlock is currently hiding out in Kazimar and it feels wrong to be making this kind of arrest in a holy place.  
He thinks of John, alone in 221B. The flat quiet. Perhaps John is running his fingers along the spine of a book, turning a page. A mystery novel. Is it possible that John would be thinking of Sherlock at all? This image hurts. It’s been eight months. 

 

^

“You’re losing focus,” Mycroft says over the phone. His voice almost sounds concerned which makes it worse.  
“I’m fine,” Sherlock replies stiffly.  
“I spoke with him today,” Mycroft says. Sherlock feels as though the floor has fallen out from under him.  
“And?” Sherlock demands.  
“If I tell you, would it distract you more?”  
“I’m fine,” Sherlock responds automatically. “How is he?”  
“Not exactly well. He’s been worse.”  
“Well what did he say?” Sherlock asks, thumbing his bottom lip.  
“He says he’s doing fine. I know he’s lying.”

The line goes dead. Ten months. 

 

^

It’s been a year. A year without John. A year patching up his own wounds. A year talking to himself. A year knowing he’s desperately in love with someone who will not love him back. Maybe John had thought of it, but whatever could have been had ended when Sherlock died.  
How will he approach him again? Quick and (hopefully) painless seems the only option. To storm into John’s life just as he stormed in at the very beginning. To demand entrance.  
If that doesn’t work he’ll go quiet. He won’t be happy but he’ll be quiet.  
As long as John is alive, the work has been worth it. 

_I do not wish to live without him, but I will, if he thinks it best._

^

 

He goes back to London once, only for a day. He does not let himself go to Baker Street. He does what he has to do to come back from the dead. 

Sebastian Moran had been the one who had his sniper rifle pointed at John the day Sherlock died. This one is special. He is the best sniper in continent and one of Moriarty’s most important men. 

He finds Moran at a hotel. Sherlock waits inside his room.  
When Moran enters he smiles.  
“I’ve been waiting for you Mr. Holmes. I wondered who had been taking out all my men. Now I suppose I will have to take one of yours.”  
Sherlock lunges forward.  
The fight is intimate heavy. It’s grotesque. Sherlock can see the sweat drip down between Moran’s eyes and he shoves his thumbs into Moran’s throat just a bit tighter.  
Moran scratches his face, makes it even bleed a little. Moran pulls at his hair, but the pain is meaningless.  
Moran gets a kick into Sherlock’s liver, and Sherlock doubles over.  
Moran coughs hard, spitting onto the floor. He pulls his gun out of his jeans. Moran points the pistol directly at Sherlock’s head.  
“Just fucking do it!” Sherlock screams, his voice hoarse.  
Moran watches Sherlock from where he’s sat on the floor, against the bed.  
“At least die on your feet,” Moran says, venom unfolding itself from his voice.  
“But that would be a luxury,” Sherlock replies. 

Moran bends down so that he meets Sherlock at eye level. Their faces are inches apart. It’s what Sherlock had been waiting for. 

“Your performance of death was the coward’s way out. Will you really repeat yourself?” Moran asks.  
“No, I don’t think so,” Sherlock says.  
He uses the small hidden dagger easily. The blood from the throat flows easily.  
He isn’t satisfied. 

 

^

 

Just a little under two years. Sherlock’s hair is far too long and he’s been pulling it up. The only upside to it is imagining what John might think of the length.  
John would tell him to get a haircut but then run his fingers through the curls as they kiss. John must be a wonderful kisser.  
He’d been caught, however.  
He’d been caught three months ago and right now he’s fairly certain he is going to die and it will all have meant nothing.  
They’ve torn his back apart. Serbia has been unmerciful, and he never expected them to be.  
The wounds on his back are torn open, and they hurt in a way he hadn’t known existed before this. He’s afraid he’s going to pass out from the pain.  
He does the only thing he knows how to do, the only thing that even remotely has a chance of saving him: he enters his mind palace and searches for John.  
He has kept a room just for John for a while now. Possibly from the beginning. It gets hard to keep track.  
He goes to John now, lets it happen easily. He lets the pain fall away, whatever it may mean for him later. 

“Hi,” John says as he turns to face Sherlock. Today he’s wearing the oatmeal colored sweater. Sherlock hates it and loves it at the same time. It doesn’t frame John’s figure well but it has always looked like it was warm, secure, undeniably a thing to curl up against and feel comfort emanate from one’s self.  
“I’m afraid,” Sherlock says. “I think I’m going to die.”  
John reaches out to Sherlock and takes his hand. His grip is steady and unfaltering.  
“I don’t think you are going to die. I think Mycroft will be here soon. But, if you do die, I’ll be right here. I’ll hold your hand the whole time.”

Sherlock knows it’s a lie, but doesn’t stop himself. He lets John sit him down and take him in his arms. He lets John run fingers through his too long hair and press light kisses against his temple. The pain is only an after-image, a soft brush stroke somewhere outside, a barely audible knock on the door. It’s working.  
“I love you,” Sherlock says against John’s neck. “I know it doesn’t matter that I’m saying it here and now, because I’m going to die, but I love you.”  
“It does matter. It matters very much.”

There are footsteps, and then a familiar voice.  
Mycroft is here, three months late. 

 

^

Sherlock had thought (foolishly) that John was just on another date. Then, when John had gripped his throat and fallen down on top of him, he’d felt the box against John’s left breast pocket. It all made sense. The restaurant, the champagne selection, the realization feels like burning. Suddenly the pit of Sherlock’s stomach feels raw and tight. Every noise he hears makes his entire body jerk. He knows the feeling, even if he hasn’t felt it in years. Anxiety attack. He’s on the ground and he’s letting John bleed him dry. If John choked him to death right now it would be amazing and a release not unlike climax. He doesn’t mind, so long as John continues to touch him. 

Later, John gets in a cab with his soon to be fiancé, and Sherlock walks back towards Baker St. He smokes three cigarettes. He finds himself automatically going down the same streets he said he’d never go to again. He enters the drug den easily. He makes the purchase easily. It’s not the same people anymore and he isn’t sure if that means anyone got out or if it just means they all became nothing.  
He makes it back to Baker Street.  
Takes off his coat. His shoes. Fills the syringe.  
He finds himself kneeling on the left side of his bed, knees on the floor, clutching his bed sheets, head pressed into a pillow, the syringe lying in the center of his mattress.  
His hands shake as they fist the bedding, his fingers scratching at the cloth feels strange. He’s half hyperventilating half screaming into his pillow. He doesn’t want Mrs. Hudson to hear. 

After an hour, he vomits the little food he has in his stomach into the toilet. He adds the contents of the syringe and flushes it all down. John would only hate him more. 

He’s fairly certain the pit of his stomach will feel like this for a long time. 

 

^

 

John is going to be married in two weeks. John has fallen asleep on Baker Street’s sofa. Sherlock had been playing the violin for him, and he’d turned, and John had been asleep, the Union Jack pillow under his head. 

He looks peaceful in sleep. Sherlock sits down in the Client Chair, violin and bow still in his hands. Sherlock watches John sleep. It almost feels like how it did before he left. Before Sherlock went through hell to come back and hold this man in his arms only to be told that he’d have to settle for simply seeing him happy. That was what he really wanted anyway.  
He’d been stupid to think that John would have waited for him, not moved on with his life. John was the most resilient man Sherlock knew. He could take anything, be anything, do anything. Why would Sherlock’s death have been any different? 

“I love you. I tried not to but I fell in love with you anyway. And I wasn’t quick enough. But I’ll still be here. Whenever and however you want me.”

John continues to sleep, oblivious to Sherlock’s choked voice, the burning in his stomach, the tiny moths eating away at his chest and rib bones, the vile and unworthy lump in his throat that is threatening hot tears.  
Sherlock accidently lets out a loud sob when he tries to breathe, and John stirs in his sleep.  
Sherlock gets up immediately before he is caught. He goes to bed and tries not to think about how helpless he feels. 

 

^

 

They’re the type of drunk that used to annoy Sherlock. The type of drunk where he can’t remember much, can’t focus, the outlines of his vision fuzzy. His brain is slow which normally is unacceptable but now, now it’s magnificent.  
John touches Sherlock’s knee, leaves his hand there just a moment too long, and Sherlock can’t possibly be misreading this, even with all the scotch.  
“I don’t mind,” John says, shrugging, throwing his arms up in the air.  
Was that an offer?  
“Any time,” Sherlock replies, softly, into his glass, just in case.  
But nothing else happens. 

How can John not know?

 

^

The wedding is worse than Sherlock could ever have imagined. He looks away when they say their vows in the church and he doesn’t care if anyone notices or questions it. He cannot look. 

He stays as long as he has to.  
John is going to have a child. Sherlock feels so wrong for immediately wishing it weren’t true, but the thought comes anyway.  
Sherlock is sure that John sees something there, in his face, a moment of the mask falling. 

 

_There is nothing I would not do for you. I’ve already walked through fire for you. Please don’t look at me this way._

 

^

Mary shoots Sherlock and he thinks this might be deserved, as he probably should have stayed dead anyway.  
Still, he survives.  
John is definitely in danger.

 

^

If John doesn’t know now, it isn’t possible he ever will understand. There is a dead man lying between John and Sherlock and although there have been others that Sherlock has killed for John, this one is the only one he will ever know of. This one means willingly sacrificing a lifetime of freedom.  
Only, Sherlock has been shackled for too many years to remember.  
John looks at him, shell shocked and confused, but soft, like waking up early on a Tuesday morning and realizing you can sleep more, if you wanted to.  
“Give Mary my love,” Sherlock says.

 

^

 

They’re on the tarmac and Sherlock had such carefully planned words. 

_“My dearest boy,_

_This is to assure you of my immortal, my eternal love for you. Tomorrow all will be over. If prison and dishonor be my destiny, think that my love for you and this idea, this still more divine belief, that you love me in reture will sustain me in my unhappiness and will make me capable, I hope, of bearing my grief most patiently. Since the hope, nay rather the certainty, of meeting you again in some world is the goal and encouragement of my present life, ah! I must continue to live in this world because of that.”_

Sherlock aborts his love and leaves it in the tips of his fingers as he grips John’s hand, bare skin to bare skin. 

If John doesn’t know now he never will, because Sherlock most likely will never get the chance to tell him.  
When the plane takes off, Sherlock gives himself a full minute to fully sob. He presses his palms into his eyelids and thinks of a quick death by firing squad. 

When the plane touches back down it is difficult not to grab John and kiss him in full. Instead, he brushes past him, doesn’t even look at him, and enters the black limousine that Mycroft has waiting for him. It’s the only way not to grab John, and doing that would be far too dangerous. 

 

^

 

When Mary is gone, putting John back together is not easy, but after everything else Sherlock has done for him, it doesn’t feel like much. 

John is drunk nearly a month after Mary had left. He’s been fiddling with his shirt buttons for over ten minutes. He looks up at Sherlock every now and again.  
It’s been awkward between them sometimes. There is something too heavy and tone deaf hiding in the spaces between them. 

“I think I know what you were going to say on the tarmac. You started, and then you stopped,” John says. He is looking down into his glass but then he meets Sherlock’s eyes and for the first time in a long time doesn’t look away. They are both sat in their chairs and neither says anything for a few moments. 

Sherlock draws in a breath.  
“What is it you think I was going to say?” Sherlock asks, keeping his voice as emotionless as possible. If it all goes wrong he’ll want to be able to deny.  
“I don’t want to say, in case I’m wrong,” John replies.  
Sherlock rolls his eyes. 

John takes another sip of his beer and then gets up from his chair. He walks to Sherlock.  
“I think you were going to say something like this.”  
John bends down and takes Sherlock’s face in his left palm, then kisses him softly. 

It isn’t like anything Sherlock ever expected.  
It’s heartbreakingly wonderful. But it’s also tainted with too much.  
Sherlock does what he thought he’d never do. He pushes John away gently. John’s face falls and turns into something akin to horror.  
“No,” Sherlock says. “I would do anything for you. Anything that you could ever ask. But I am not her.”

John steps away.  
“I’m sorry, Sherlock,” John says, shuffling his feet. 

To save them both further embarrassment Sherlock gathers his rather unbelieving and limp body and goes into his bedroom.  
He feels like he is going to die or shake terribly until he shatters into something ugly and unkind. 

Sherlock falls asleep with all of his clothes on, his shoes leaving dirt marks on his bed sheets. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sherlock wakes up to knocking on his door. He pulls himself off of his bed and opens his door.  
John is there, looking beautiful in the morning light.  
Sherlock just stares at him, unsure of what to say.  
“I’m not sorry,” John says earnestly, and there is something burning in his eyes that tells Sherlock that he should listen.  
“I told you, I’m not--” Sherlock begins.  
“You were wrong. You have never been more wrong. I don’t want you to be her. I want you to be you. How can you not know?” John asks, his expression begging to be understood.  
“Not know what?”  
“I would have done anything for you. I would have followed you anywhere. I would have gone with you and taken care of you the entire time. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said one word was all I would have needed. I would have waited for you.”

_Oh._

The reality hits and Sherlock is stunned immobile, right hand clutching at the door frame for support.  
“John,” Sherlock sputters. His body won’t obey his mind, the transport is betraying him as it always does.  
“Sherlock, do you understand what I’m trying to say? I love you. I loved you for a very long time and death did nothing to change that.”

Sherlock thinks he may be underwater. Perhaps they are back at the pool, and the bomb has gone off, and they have been blasted into the chlorine stench. Perhaps they are swimming towards each other. Perhaps they are finally taking their last gulps of air into their lungs together. The world would have been a much quieter place if it had all ended this way instead. 

John presses his mouth to Sherlock’s jawline and then to his chin. Sherlock feels his eyelids flutter open and shut like the sun is in his eyes.  
“Say something,” John says, and his voice is so quiet it breaks Sherlock’s heart for the hundredth time.  
“I love you,” Sherlock hears himself say, only he isn’t sure that he is the one saying it. His mouth is moving of its own accord and he feels numb and hot at the same time. It happens again. “I love you,” he repeats. He says it four more times until John’s mouth catches his own.  
He accidently sobs against John’s mouth and he doesn’t know if he’s even embarrassed. He has no idea how he looks right now but it doesn’t matter because John’s right hand is against his spine and his left hand is in Sherlock’s hair. 

 

“You’ve loved me forever, haven’t you?” John asks. His voice seems raw and there is a confused pressure inside of it.  
“Yes,” Sherlock says. He slips his tongue into John’s mouth and John groans.  
“How did we not know?” John asks, pulling away a bit just to take in Sherlock’s face.  
“It’s difficult to conceive of the impossible,” Sherlock replies. He’s sure he looks pathetic.  
“But it seemed impossible that you didn’t know,” John says.  
“Know what?”  
“That I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know, this just sort of happened.
> 
> the italics during the tarmac scene are from oscar wilde's letter on the night before the last trial he faced.


End file.
